I think if you're claiming that voter fraud doesn't and hasn't existed at all, then you're being unreasonable, especially about something you can't prove. What has been shown in this thread is that there is no widespread systematic voter fraud. Basically no conspiracies of fraud. This is very different from what you're saying.
I said you were bullshitting me on the 'lack the ability to measure the fraud', and you were. You were putting words in his mouth he didn't say to make his position look worse. He's never implied that there is fraud, that we just can't measure it. He's said we don't know how much fraud there is. This can include a possibility of zero fraud!
The ONLY difference between what he and you are saying is that you are denying that there has been ANY FRAUD EVER. Which is completely unprovable.
I think if you're claiming that voter fraud doesn't and hasn't existed at all, then you're being unreasonable, especially about something you can't prove. What has been shown in this thread is that there is no widespread systematic voter fraud. Basically no conspiracies of fraud. This is very different from what you're saying.
I said you were bullshitting me on the 'lack the ability to measure the fraud', and you were. You were putting words in his mouth he didn't say to make his position look worse. He's never implied that there is fraud, that we just can't measure it. He's said we don't know how much fraud there is. This can include a possibility of zero fraud!
The ONLY difference between what he and you are saying is that you are denying that there has been ANY FRAUD EVER. Which is completely unprovable.
No, it's basically the equivalent of saying "There are no unicorns". Can't prove a negative, yes, but your logic is still being brutally waterboarded while you pretend we can't say for certain that there are no unicorns.
Back to things in reality, 70% of american think the rich should pay higher taxes and that social programs should not be taxed. Good thing Paul Ryan's budget does the opposite of that!
Preacher on
I would like some money because these are artisanal nuggets of wisdom philistine.
Yeah, but then you look at the numbers on who voters trust to deal with the deficit and it's evenly split, and almost a majority of independents think Obama should be doing more to compromise with Republicans.
The disconnect is frustrating. I guess this is a bit of new issue though, since it probably only broke upon the unawares in the last few weeks. Maybe more time will bring their policy preferences into line with political reality.
I think if you're claiming that voter fraud doesn't and hasn't existed at all, then you're being unreasonable, especially about something you can't prove. What has been shown in this thread is that there is no widespread systematic voter fraud. Basically no conspiracies of fraud. This is very different from what you're saying.
I said you were bullshitting me on the 'lack the ability to measure the fraud', and you were. You were putting words in his mouth he didn't say to make his position look worse. He's never implied that there is fraud, that we just can't measure it. He's said we don't know how much fraud there is. This can include a possibility of zero fraud!
The ONLY difference between what he and you are saying is that you are denying that there has been ANY FRAUD EVER. Which is completely unprovable.
No, it's basically the equivalent of saying "There are no unicorns". Can't prove a negative, yes, but your logic is still being brutally waterboarded while you pretend we can't say for certain that there are no unicorns.
FYI?
There are no unicorns.
If my logic is being waterboarded then please point it out, instead of making inane non-sequiters. Saying 'there has never been voter fraud in the us' is not 'there are no unicorns'. I'm going to assume I don't need to detail all the reasons, but I will if you're unwilling to yield the point.
Yeah, but then you look at the numbers on who voters trust to deal with the deficit and it's evenly split, and almost a majority of independents think Obama should be doing more to compromise with Republicans.
The disconnect is frustrating. I guess this is a bit of new issue though, since it probably only broke upon the unawares in the last few weeks. Maybe more time will bring their policy preferences into line with political reality.
You quoted me in the other thread! Gas prices!
enlightenedbum on
Self-righteousness is incompatible with coalition building.
Yeah, but then you look at the numbers on who voters trust to deal with the deficit and it's evenly split, and almost a majority of independents think Obama should be doing more to compromise with Republicans.
The disconnect is frustrating. I guess this is a bit of new issue though, since it probably only broke upon the unawares in the last few weeks. Maybe more time will bring their policy preferences into line with political reality.
Yeah that was the bad part of that, but I think with the house vote on the ryan plan on the books, you could hammer that % in the election.
"Republicans want to give tax breaks to the wealthy and cut medicare, do you support them?"
Preacher on
I would like some money because these are artisanal nuggets of wisdom philistine.
I think if you're claiming that voter fraud doesn't and hasn't existed at all, then you're being unreasonable, especially about something you can't prove. What has been shown in this thread is that there is no widespread systematic voter fraud. Basically no conspiracies of fraud. This is very different from what you're saying.
I said you were bullshitting me on the 'lack the ability to measure the fraud', and you were. You were putting words in his mouth he didn't say to make his position look worse. He's never implied that there is fraud, that we just can't measure it. He's said we don't know how much fraud there is. This can include a possibility of zero fraud!
The ONLY difference between what he and you are saying is that you are denying that there has been ANY FRAUD EVER. Which is completely unprovable.
No, it's basically the equivalent of saying "There are no unicorns". Can't prove a negative, yes, but your logic is still being brutally waterboarded while you pretend we can't say for certain that there are no unicorns.
FYI?
There are no unicorns.
If my logic is being waterboarded then please point it out, instead of making inane non-sequiters. Saying 'there has never been voter fraud in the us' is not 'there are no unicorns'. I'm going to assume I don't need to detail all the reasons, but I will if you're unwilling to yield the point.
I believe he's saying that voter fraud (wherein a bunch of people show up to vote for a specific candidate, whether they're properly registered or not, and supposedly do so at multiple polling places) is realistically impossible. The method is far too unwieldy to actually warrant serious thought. There are six or seven easier ways to rig elections that are cheaper, more efficient, more likely to net a win, and less likely to be exposed.
Yet the old Voter fraud thing keeps getting put out there like it's a systemic problem when that has never, ever, been shown to be the case. Acting like it MIGHT be a serious issue is disengenuous. Acting like it IS one is just being a dick. Making laws that disenfranchise people (who are likely to vote Democrat, conveniently) under the guise of preventing Voter fraud is just plain wrong.
I think if you're claiming that voter fraud doesn't and hasn't existed at all, then you're being unreasonable, especially about something you can't prove. What has been shown in this thread is that there is no widespread systematic voter fraud. Basically no conspiracies of fraud. This is very different from what you're saying.
I said you were bullshitting me on the 'lack the ability to measure the fraud', and you were. You were putting words in his mouth he didn't say to make his position look worse. He's never implied that there is fraud, that we just can't measure it. He's said we don't know how much fraud there is. This can include a possibility of zero fraud!
The ONLY difference between what he and you are saying is that you are denying that there has been ANY FRAUD EVER. Which is completely unprovable.
No, it's basically the equivalent of saying "There are no unicorns". Can't prove a negative, yes, but your logic is still being brutally waterboarded while you pretend we can't say for certain that there are no unicorns.
FYI?
There are no unicorns.
If my logic is being waterboarded then please point it out, instead of making inane non-sequiters. Saying 'there has never been voter fraud in the us' is not 'there are no unicorns'. I'm going to assume I don't need to detail all the reasons, but I will if you're unwilling to yield the point.
I believe he's saying that voter fraud (wherein a bunch of people show up to vote for a specific candidate, whether they're properly registered or not, and supposedly do so at multiple polling places) is realistically impossible. The method is far too unwieldy to actually warrant serious thought. There are six or seven easier ways to rig elections that are cheaper, more efficient, more likely to net a win, and less likely to be exposed.
Yet the old Voter fraud thing keeps getting put out there like it's a systemic problem when that has never, ever, been shown to be the case. Acting like it MIGHT be a serious issue is disengenuous. Acting like it IS one is just being a dick. Making laws that disenfranchise people (who are likely to vote Democrat, conveniently) under the guise of preventing Voter fraud is just plain wrong.
Bingo.
Like the unicorn, voter fraud of the sort voter ID laws deal with are so unrealistic and unlikely and the like that we can safely say "They do not exist". That's it's unprovable to 100% certainty in either case is irrelevant. You can't prove a negative.
If you want further clarification on this rather common argument, see any religion thread ever in DnD. It'll be in there at least once.
I think if you're claiming that voter fraud doesn't and hasn't existed at all, then you're being unreasonable, especially about something you can't prove. What has been shown in this thread is that there is no widespread systematic voter fraud. Basically no conspiracies of fraud. This is very different from what you're saying.
I said you were bullshitting me on the 'lack the ability to measure the fraud', and you were. You were putting words in his mouth he didn't say to make his position look worse. He's never implied that there is fraud, that we just can't measure it. He's said we don't know how much fraud there is. This can include a possibility of zero fraud!
The ONLY difference between what he and you are saying is that you are denying that there has been ANY FRAUD EVER. Which is completely unprovable.
No, it's basically the equivalent of saying "There are no unicorns". Can't prove a negative, yes, but your logic is still being brutally waterboarded while you pretend we can't say for certain that there are no unicorns.
FYI?
There are no unicorns.
If my logic is being waterboarded then please point it out, instead of making inane non-sequiters. Saying 'there has never been voter fraud in the us' is not 'there are no unicorns'. I'm going to assume I don't need to detail all the reasons, but I will if you're unwilling to yield the point.
I believe he's saying that voter fraud (wherein a bunch of people show up to vote for a specific candidate, whether they're properly registered or not, and supposedly do so at multiple polling places) is realistically impossible. The method is far too unwieldy to actually warrant serious thought. There are six or seven easier ways to rig elections that are cheaper, more efficient, more likely to net a win, and less likely to be exposed.
Yet the old Voter fraud thing keeps getting put out there like it's a systemic problem when that has never, ever, been shown to be the case. Acting like it MIGHT be a serious issue is disengenuous. Acting like it IS one is just being a dick. Making laws that disenfranchise people (who are likely to vote Democrat, conveniently) under the guise of preventing Voter fraud is just plain wrong.
Well if that's what he's saying, then could you kindly tell him:
The discussion is not about the best method of voter fraud, or even whether voter fraud is likely. It's about whether or not it has ever happened, or is even possible.
No one in this conversation has said it's a systemic problem. No one has implied it. No one has said it's a serious issue. No one has advocated any laws that disenfranchise people.
So in short, please go back and read the discussion before making biased assumptions about what we're talking about.
I think if you're claiming that voter fraud doesn't and hasn't existed at all, then you're being unreasonable, especially about something you can't prove. What has been shown in this thread is that there is no widespread systematic voter fraud. Basically no conspiracies of fraud. This is very different from what you're saying.
I said you were bullshitting me on the 'lack the ability to measure the fraud', and you were. You were putting words in his mouth he didn't say to make his position look worse. He's never implied that there is fraud, that we just can't measure it. He's said we don't know how much fraud there is. This can include a possibility of zero fraud!
The ONLY difference between what he and you are saying is that you are denying that there has been ANY FRAUD EVER. Which is completely unprovable.
No, it's basically the equivalent of saying "There are no unicorns". Can't prove a negative, yes, but your logic is still being brutally waterboarded while you pretend we can't say for certain that there are no unicorns.
FYI?
There are no unicorns.
If my logic is being waterboarded then please point it out, instead of making inane non-sequiters. Saying 'there has never been voter fraud in the us' is not 'there are no unicorns'. I'm going to assume I don't need to detail all the reasons, but I will if you're unwilling to yield the point.
I believe he's saying that voter fraud (wherein a bunch of people show up to vote for a specific candidate, whether they're properly registered or not, and supposedly do so at multiple polling places) is realistically impossible. The method is far too unwieldy to actually warrant serious thought. There are six or seven easier ways to rig elections that are cheaper, more efficient, more likely to net a win, and less likely to be exposed.
Yet the old Voter fraud thing keeps getting put out there like it's a systemic problem when that has never, ever, been shown to be the case. Acting like it MIGHT be a serious issue is disengenuous. Acting like it IS one is just being a dick. Making laws that disenfranchise people (who are likely to vote Democrat, conveniently) under the guise of preventing Voter fraud is just plain wrong.
Bingo.
Like the unicorn, voter fraud of the sort voter ID laws deal with are so unrealistic and unlikely and the like that we can safely say "They do not exist". That's it's unprovable to 100% certainty in either case is irrelevant. You can't prove a negative.
If you want further clarification on this rather common argument, see any religion thread ever in DnD. It'll be in there at least once.
You sound pretty sassy for someone who just dismantled his own argument. So then admit that you don't know for sure whether voter fraud has ever occurred? And so it's a reasonable statement to say that we don't know the level of voter fraud occurring?
Just ... wow. I don't think you are actually parsing what anyone else is saying here. And this is getting pointless and off-topic though.
Voter fraud of the type mentioned is a unicorn. It doesn't and can't exist. To entertain it's existing merely perpetuates laws and policies that disenfranchise voters for no reason.
Just ... wow. I don't think you are actually parsing what anyone else is saying here. And this is getting pointless and off-topic though.
Voter fraud of the type mentioned is a unicorn. It doesn't and can't exist. To entertain it's existing merely perpetuates laws and policies that disenfranchise voters for no reason.
And that is the end of it.
And what TYPE is that? The TYPE you're talking about is something ONLY YOU are talking about!
This is what YOU'RE not parsing. I'm not saying it's a SIGNIFICANT amount, just a POTENTIALLY NON-ZERO amount.
Everyone got their panties all bunched up because spool never said ZERO fraud, and I'm just showing how incredibly stupid and pedantic that distinction is.
Just ... wow. I don't think you are actually parsing what anyone else is saying here. And this is getting pointless and off-topic though.
Voter fraud of the type mentioned is a unicorn. It doesn't and can't exist. To entertain it's existing merely perpetuates laws and policies that disenfranchise voters for no reason.
And that is the end of it.
And what TYPE is that? The TYPE you're talking about is something ONLY YOU are talking about!
This is what YOU'RE not parsing. I'm not saying it's a SIGNIFICANT amount, just a POTENTIALLY NON-ZERO amount.
Everyone got their panties all bunched up because spool never said ZERO fraud, and I'm just showing how incredibly stupid and pedantic that distinction is.
The type everyone has been talking about. Voter fraud is a fairly wide-ranging set of activities, not all of which are applicable to the laws being discussed. Thus, we specify. In this case, the type of voter fraud that could be combated with voter ID laws.
What type is that?
Taramoor probably put it best:
wherein a bunch of people show up to vote for a specific candidate, whether they're properly registered or not, and supposedly do so at multiple polling places
Although there's probably a few similar activities.
All though are as equally impossible.
This isn't hard to understand and has been made quite clear several times here.
If you think it's impossible for someone to make a vote in an area where they're not registered and doesn't check id's, then I don't know what to tell you. I'm not even saying that they have to do it multiple times.
We're going to stop arguing about voter fraud now, because it's gone well past the point of being A) on-topic, interesting, or C) civil.
ElJeffe on
I submitted an entry to Lego Ideas, and if 10,000 people support me, it'll be turned into an actual Lego set!If you'd like to see and support my submission, follow this link.
Yeah, but then you look at the numbers on who voters trust to deal with the deficit and it's evenly split, and almost a majority of independents think Obama should be doing more to compromise with Republicans.
The disconnect is frustrating. I guess this is a bit of new issue though, since it probably only broke upon the unawares in the last few weeks. Maybe more time will bring their policy preferences into line with political reality.
Yeah that was the bad part of that, but I think with the house vote on the ryan plan on the books, you could hammer that % in the election.
"Republicans want to give tax breaks to the wealthy and cut medicare, do you support them?"
Which is still a year and a half away. I'm skeptical anyone will remember it even this summer
Yeah, but then you look at the numbers on who voters trust to deal with the deficit and it's evenly split, and almost a majority of independents think Obama should be doing more to compromise with Republicans.
The disconnect is frustrating. I guess this is a bit of new issue though, since it probably only broke upon the unawares in the last few weeks. Maybe more time will bring their policy preferences into line with political reality.
Yeah that was the bad part of that, but I think with the house vote on the ryan plan on the books, you could hammer that % in the election.
"Republicans want to give tax breaks to the wealthy and cut medicare, do you support them?"
Which is still a year and a half away. I'm skeptical anyone will remember it even this summer
Wasn't there some big kerfuffle like a week ago when a bunch of Democrats in the House didn't vote and almost destroyed the economy? They wanted presents, if I remember correctly.
So, was the debt ceiling raised? I just want to know if the chicken they are playing with the world economy has ruined us all this week or if it will be postponed a week.
Void Slayer on
He's a shy overambitious dog-catcher on the wrong side of the law. She's an orphaned psychic mercenary with the power to bend men's minds. They fight crime!
And it will absolutely be raised, because a majority of the House is sane enough to realize it has to be.
ElJeffe on
I submitted an entry to Lego Ideas, and if 10,000 people support me, it'll be turned into an actual Lego set!If you'd like to see and support my submission, follow this link.
Well, you need 40 to sustain it. 53 Dems + Maine + 5 more.
I thought you need 60 Yea votes to bring something to a final vote, but you can't ask for cloture if they're reading the phone book.
From what I can tell, the House is different, and put a rule in that limits the total time of debate on a subject, so a filibuster is essentially impossible there.
edit: wait, you mean in the senate. Have any of the senate critters made a serious claim to filibustering it? All the crazy I've seen about it has been from the house. The Senate was pretty quietly just hoping nobody noticed that they were bipartisan against stupid this one time.
In that case, you can force a cloture vote while they're talking. There doesn't seem to be anything that says "if dude's just rambling, you're fucked"
Actually, that's the entire *idea* of why the filibuster has become the kiss of death in the Senate.
Officially, the Senate relies on a majority vote. But with the filibuster being used more and more, it essentially takes 60 senators to get anything done, since that's the number required for cloture.
OF course, voting for cloture can be translated into support for the bill- but again, for a bill like this it's *possible* that cloture would be invoked fast.
I'm honestly expecting an ad like this to show up pretty soon.
My name is Dave Reichert. I am a Republican, and a Conservative, from the state of Washington. On Friday, April 12th, two hundred and thirty-five congressmen voted to end Medicare as we know it.
In that case, you can force a cloture vote while they're talking. There doesn't seem to be anything that says "if dude's just rambling, you're fucked"
Actually, that's the entire *idea* of why the filibuster has become the kiss of death in the Senate.
Officially, the Senate relies on a majority vote. But with the filibuster being used more and more, it essentially takes 60 senators to get anything done, since that's the number required for cloture.
OF course, voting for cloture can be translated into support for the bill- but again, for a bill like this it's *possible* that cloture would be invoked fast.
The minute a nose count with less than sixty names on it is circulated for a cloture vote on the debt ceiling, the stock market starts hemorrhaging shares. It'll be just like when Congress failed on its first attempt to pass the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act in September '08, only worse.
The next day, everyone will be surprised when, contrary to the earlier whip count, eighty Senators vote in favor of cloture.
Obama's townhall at Facebook today was great. One question-answer in particular stood out to me.
Q Hi, hey. I’m from -- originally from San Jose, California. My question is: The 2012 budget plan proposed by Paul Ryan has been praised by many in the media as bold or brave. Do you see this as a time that calls for boldness, and do you think that the plan you outlined last week demonstrated sufficient boldness, or is this just a media creation?
THE PRESIDENT: No, it’s a great question. Look, here is what I’d say. The Republican budget that was put forward I would say is fairly radical. I wouldn’t call it particularly courageous. I do think Mr. Ryan is sincere. I think he’s a patriot. I think he wants to solve a real problem, which is our long-term deficit. But I think that what he and the other Republicans in the House of Representatives also want to do is change our social compact in a pretty fundamental way.
Their basic view is that no matter how successful I am, no matter how much I’ve taken from this country -- I wasn’t born wealthy; I was raised by a single mom and my grandparents. I went to college on scholarships. There was a time when my mom was trying to get her PhD, where for a short time she had to take food stamps. My grandparents relied on Medicare and Social Security to help supplement their income when they got old.
So their notion is, despite the fact that I’ve benefited from all these investments -- my grandfather benefited from the GI Bill after he fought in World War II -- that somehow I now have no obligation to people who are less fortunate than me and I have no real obligation to future generations to make investments so that they have a better.
So what his budget proposal does is not only hold income tax flat, he actually wants to further reduce taxes for the wealthy, further reduce taxes for corporations, not pay for those, and in order to make his numbers work, cut 70 percent out of our clean energy budget, cut 25 percent out of our education budget, cut transportation budgets by a third. I guess you could call that bold. I would call it shortsighted. (Applause.)
And then, as I said, there’s a fundamental difference between how the Republicans and I think about Medicare and Medicaid and our health care system. Their basic theory is that if we just turn Medicare into a voucher program and turn Medicaid into block grant programs, then now you, a Medicare recipient, will go out and you’ll shop for the best insurance that you’ve got -- that you can find -- and that you’re going to control costs because you’re going to say to the insurance company, this is all I can afford.
That will control costs, except if you get sick and the policy that you bought doesn’t cover what you’ve got. Then either you’re going to mortgage your house or you’re going to go to the emergency room, in which case I, who do have insurance, are going to have to pay for it indirectly because the hospital is going to have uncompensated care.
So they don’t really want to make the health care system more efficient and cheaper. What they want to do is to push the costs of health care inflation on to you. And then you’ll be on your own trying to figure out in the marketplace how to make health care cheaper.
The problem is, you’re just one person. Now, you work at Facebook, it’s a big enough company; Facebook can probably negotiate with insurance companies and providers to get you a pretty good deal. But if you’re a startup company, if you’re an entrepreneur out there in the back of your garage, good luck trying to get insurance on your own. You can’t do it. If you’re somebody who’s older and has a preexisting condition, insurance companies won’t take you.
So what we’ve said is let’s make sure instead of just pushing the costs off on to people who individually are not going to have any negotiating power or ability to change how providers operate, or how hospitals or doctors operate, how insurance companies operate, let’s make sure that we have a system both for Medicare but also for people who currently don’t have health insurance where they can be part of a big pool. They can negotiate for changes in how the health care system works so that it’s more efficient; so that it’s more effective; so that you get better care, so that we have fewer infection rates, for example, in hospitals; so there are fewer readmission rates; so that we’re caring for the chronically ill more effectively; so that there are fewer unnecessary tests. That’s how you save money. The government will save money, but you’ll also save money.
So we think that’s a better way of doing it. Now, what they’ll say is, well, you know what, that will never work because it’s government imposed and it’s bureaucracy and it’s government takeover and there are death panels. I still don’t entirely understand the whole “death panel” concept. But I guess what they’re saying is somehow some remote bureaucrat will be deciding your health care for you. All we’re saying is if we’ve got health care experts -- doctors and nurses and consumers -- who are helping to design how Medicare works more intelligently, then we don't have to radically change Medicare.
So, yes, I think it’s fair to say that their vision is radical. No, I don't think it’s particularly courageous. Because the last point I’ll make is this. Nothing is easier than solving a problem on the backs of people who are poor or people who are powerless or don't have lobbyists or don't have clout. I don't think that's particularly courageous. (Applause.)
Mostly that final paragraph. His point and the way he delivered it was just superb.
there are moments when I really deeply do love my president.
that answer right there, that's one of those moments.
Are those moments followed by crushing despair when you realize congress will shit out something halfway in between Ryan's ideas and his?
Basically one half moderate rational one half FUCK IT ROAD WARRIOR LOOKED LIKE A GOOD BASIS FOR A GOVERNMENT
Damnit we will never get to Road Warrior that way, way to half ass it.
Void Slayer on
He's a shy overambitious dog-catcher on the wrong side of the law. She's an orphaned psychic mercenary with the power to bend men's minds. They fight crime!
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lonelyahavaCall me Ahava ~~She/Her~~Move to New ZealandRegistered Userregular
there are moments when I really deeply do love my president.
that answer right there, that's one of those moments.
Are those moments followed by crushing despair when you realize congress will shit out something halfway in between Ryan's ideas and his?
Basically one half moderate rational one half FUCK IT ROAD WARRIOR LOOKED LIKE A GOOD BASIS FOR A GOVERNMENT
Nah, the crushing despair happens on facebook.
I'm still a fairly optimistic woman, hopeful for better things and that cooler heads will prevail.
Of course I'm also not living in the states right now and occasionally I look at the news and these threads and my brain goes "ohfuckinghell thank god we got out when we did"
Posts
EDIT: Really, we need Jeffe.
I said you were bullshitting me on the 'lack the ability to measure the fraud', and you were. You were putting words in his mouth he didn't say to make his position look worse. He's never implied that there is fraud, that we just can't measure it. He's said we don't know how much fraud there is. This can include a possibility of zero fraud!
The ONLY difference between what he and you are saying is that you are denying that there has been ANY FRAUD EVER. Which is completely unprovable.
No, it's basically the equivalent of saying "There are no unicorns". Can't prove a negative, yes, but your logic is still being brutally waterboarded while you pretend we can't say for certain that there are no unicorns.
FYI?
There are no unicorns.
pleasepaypreacher.net
The disconnect is frustrating. I guess this is a bit of new issue though, since it probably only broke upon the unawares in the last few weeks. Maybe more time will bring their policy preferences into line with political reality.
If my logic is being waterboarded then please point it out, instead of making inane non-sequiters. Saying 'there has never been voter fraud in the us' is not 'there are no unicorns'. I'm going to assume I don't need to detail all the reasons, but I will if you're unwilling to yield the point.
You quoted me in the other thread! Gas prices!
Yeah that was the bad part of that, but I think with the house vote on the ryan plan on the books, you could hammer that % in the election.
"Republicans want to give tax breaks to the wealthy and cut medicare, do you support them?"
pleasepaypreacher.net
I believe he's saying that voter fraud (wherein a bunch of people show up to vote for a specific candidate, whether they're properly registered or not, and supposedly do so at multiple polling places) is realistically impossible. The method is far too unwieldy to actually warrant serious thought. There are six or seven easier ways to rig elections that are cheaper, more efficient, more likely to net a win, and less likely to be exposed.
Yet the old Voter fraud thing keeps getting put out there like it's a systemic problem when that has never, ever, been shown to be the case. Acting like it MIGHT be a serious issue is disengenuous. Acting like it IS one is just being a dick. Making laws that disenfranchise people (who are likely to vote Democrat, conveniently) under the guise of preventing Voter fraud is just plain wrong.
twitch.tv/Taramoor
@TaramoorPlays
Taramoor on Youtube
Bingo.
Like the unicorn, voter fraud of the sort voter ID laws deal with are so unrealistic and unlikely and the like that we can safely say "They do not exist". That's it's unprovable to 100% certainty in either case is irrelevant. You can't prove a negative.
If you want further clarification on this rather common argument, see any religion thread ever in DnD. It'll be in there at least once.
Well if that's what he's saying, then could you kindly tell him:
The discussion is not about the best method of voter fraud, or even whether voter fraud is likely. It's about whether or not it has ever happened, or is even possible.
No one in this conversation has said it's a systemic problem. No one has implied it. No one has said it's a serious issue. No one has advocated any laws that disenfranchise people.
So in short, please go back and read the discussion before making biased assumptions about what we're talking about.
You sound pretty sassy for someone who just dismantled his own argument. So then admit that you don't know for sure whether voter fraud has ever occurred? And so it's a reasonable statement to say that we don't know the level of voter fraud occurring?
Whuh oh! Sound like you just agreed with spool!
pleasepaypreacher.net
Voter fraud level: 3 orders below statistical noise.
They tried to bury us. They didn't know that we were seeds. 2018 Midterms. Get your shit together.
This was also Spool's point. He just never said that there was ZERO fraud occurring.
Voter fraud of the type mentioned is a unicorn. It doesn't and can't exist. To entertain it's existing merely perpetuates laws and policies that disenfranchise voters for no reason.
And that is the end of it.
EDIT:
And there, you show you get it and that you see that he said it. You just pretend not to.
And what TYPE is that? The TYPE you're talking about is something ONLY YOU are talking about!
This is what YOU'RE not parsing. I'm not saying it's a SIGNIFICANT amount, just a POTENTIALLY NON-ZERO amount.
Everyone got their panties all bunched up because spool never said ZERO fraud, and I'm just showing how incredibly stupid and pedantic that distinction is.
The type everyone has been talking about. Voter fraud is a fairly wide-ranging set of activities, not all of which are applicable to the laws being discussed. Thus, we specify. In this case, the type of voter fraud that could be combated with voter ID laws.
What type is that?
Taramoor probably put it best: Although there's probably a few similar activities.
All though are as equally impossible.
This isn't hard to understand and has been made quite clear several times here.
Failure of imagination contributed to 9-11!
We're going to stop arguing about voter fraud now, because it's gone well past the point of being A) on-topic,
Which is still a year and a half away. I'm skeptical anyone will remember it even this summer
Wasn't there some big kerfuffle like a week ago when a bunch of Democrats in the House didn't vote and almost destroyed the economy? They wanted presents, if I remember correctly.
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I believe there are enough extreme crazies for a sustained filibuster though. And they've been vowing all over the place.
You only need like five who can keep tossing the floor back and forth right? DeMint, Paul, Paul, Lee, and I think there was one more.
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I thought you need 60 Yea votes to bring something to a final vote, but you can't ask for cloture if they're reading the phone book.
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From what I can tell, the House is different, and put a rule in that limits the total time of debate on a subject, so a filibuster is essentially impossible there.
edit: wait, you mean in the senate. Have any of the senate critters made a serious claim to filibustering it? All the crazy I've seen about it has been from the house. The Senate was pretty quietly just hoping nobody noticed that they were bipartisan against stupid this one time.
Actually, that's the entire *idea* of why the filibuster has become the kiss of death in the Senate.
Officially, the Senate relies on a majority vote. But with the filibuster being used more and more, it essentially takes 60 senators to get anything done, since that's the number required for cloture.
OF course, voting for cloture can be translated into support for the bill- but again, for a bill like this it's *possible* that cloture would be invoked fast.
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The minute a nose count with less than sixty names on it is circulated for a cloture vote on the debt ceiling, the stock market starts hemorrhaging shares. It'll be just like when Congress failed on its first attempt to pass the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act in September '08, only worse.
The next day, everyone will be surprised when, contrary to the earlier whip count, eighty Senators vote in favor of cloture.
THE PRESIDENT: No, it’s a great question. Look, here is what I’d say. The Republican budget that was put forward I would say is fairly radical. I wouldn’t call it particularly courageous. I do think Mr. Ryan is sincere. I think he’s a patriot. I think he wants to solve a real problem, which is our long-term deficit. But I think that what he and the other Republicans in the House of Representatives also want to do is change our social compact in a pretty fundamental way.
Their basic view is that no matter how successful I am, no matter how much I’ve taken from this country -- I wasn’t born wealthy; I was raised by a single mom and my grandparents. I went to college on scholarships. There was a time when my mom was trying to get her PhD, where for a short time she had to take food stamps. My grandparents relied on Medicare and Social Security to help supplement their income when they got old.
So their notion is, despite the fact that I’ve benefited from all these investments -- my grandfather benefited from the GI Bill after he fought in World War II -- that somehow I now have no obligation to people who are less fortunate than me and I have no real obligation to future generations to make investments so that they have a better.
So what his budget proposal does is not only hold income tax flat, he actually wants to further reduce taxes for the wealthy, further reduce taxes for corporations, not pay for those, and in order to make his numbers work, cut 70 percent out of our clean energy budget, cut 25 percent out of our education budget, cut transportation budgets by a third. I guess you could call that bold. I would call it shortsighted. (Applause.)
And then, as I said, there’s a fundamental difference between how the Republicans and I think about Medicare and Medicaid and our health care system. Their basic theory is that if we just turn Medicare into a voucher program and turn Medicaid into block grant programs, then now you, a Medicare recipient, will go out and you’ll shop for the best insurance that you’ve got -- that you can find -- and that you’re going to control costs because you’re going to say to the insurance company, this is all I can afford.
That will control costs, except if you get sick and the policy that you bought doesn’t cover what you’ve got. Then either you’re going to mortgage your house or you’re going to go to the emergency room, in which case I, who do have insurance, are going to have to pay for it indirectly because the hospital is going to have uncompensated care.
So they don’t really want to make the health care system more efficient and cheaper. What they want to do is to push the costs of health care inflation on to you. And then you’ll be on your own trying to figure out in the marketplace how to make health care cheaper.
The problem is, you’re just one person. Now, you work at Facebook, it’s a big enough company; Facebook can probably negotiate with insurance companies and providers to get you a pretty good deal. But if you’re a startup company, if you’re an entrepreneur out there in the back of your garage, good luck trying to get insurance on your own. You can’t do it. If you’re somebody who’s older and has a preexisting condition, insurance companies won’t take you.
So what we’ve said is let’s make sure instead of just pushing the costs off on to people who individually are not going to have any negotiating power or ability to change how providers operate, or how hospitals or doctors operate, how insurance companies operate, let’s make sure that we have a system both for Medicare but also for people who currently don’t have health insurance where they can be part of a big pool. They can negotiate for changes in how the health care system works so that it’s more efficient; so that it’s more effective; so that you get better care, so that we have fewer infection rates, for example, in hospitals; so there are fewer readmission rates; so that we’re caring for the chronically ill more effectively; so that there are fewer unnecessary tests. That’s how you save money. The government will save money, but you’ll also save money.
So we think that’s a better way of doing it. Now, what they’ll say is, well, you know what, that will never work because it’s government imposed and it’s bureaucracy and it’s government takeover and there are death panels. I still don’t entirely understand the whole “death panel” concept. But I guess what they’re saying is somehow some remote bureaucrat will be deciding your health care for you. All we’re saying is if we’ve got health care experts -- doctors and nurses and consumers -- who are helping to design how Medicare works more intelligently, then we don't have to radically change Medicare.
So, yes, I think it’s fair to say that their vision is radical. No, I don't think it’s particularly courageous. Because the last point I’ll make is this. Nothing is easier than solving a problem on the backs of people who are poor or people who are powerless or don't have lobbyists or don't have clout. I don't think that's particularly courageous. (Applause.)
Mostly that final paragraph. His point and the way he delivered it was just superb.
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that answer right there, that's one of those moments.
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Are those moments followed by crushing despair when you realize congress will shit out something halfway in between Ryan's ideas and his?
Basically one half moderate rational one half FUCK IT ROAD WARRIOR LOOKED LIKE A GOOD BASIS FOR A GOVERNMENT
Damnit we will never get to Road Warrior that way, way to half ass it.
Nah, the crushing despair happens on facebook.
I'm still a fairly optimistic woman, hopeful for better things and that cooler heads will prevail.
Of course I'm also not living in the states right now and occasionally I look at the news and these threads and my brain goes "ohfuckinghell thank god we got out when we did"
but then I feel guilty. Like any good liberal.
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